On paper, Charlbury is everything the Cotswolds is supposed to be. Stone cottages the colour of anaemic butter. Sash windows in a riot of Farrow & Ball sage. A train station that survived the Beeching cuts and gets you to London in an hour.
‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how rough parts of Chipping Norton and Witney can be.’
It looks like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. And in many ways, it has worked hard to stay that way. While the setting – close to where US vice president JD Vance recently rented a manor house – may look like postcard England, locals say the reality, especially for those on the margins, is far more complicated.
‘There are three Charlburys,’ says the Reverend Fergus Butler-Gallie, the local vicar. ‘The Notting Hill set. The 1980s wave of BBC journalists and academics. And then the one no one photographs – the old Charlbury.’
He describes a town shaped by long decline. ‘Jobs were seasonal and sparse; many families emigrated,’ he says, tracing the aftershocks of the Corn Laws. ‘Later, work at the Mini factory in Cowley brought a degree of stability. Now, even that is far from certain.’
‘What were once workers’ cottages are now wildly expensive,’ he adds. ‘The great estates like Blenheim have been hammered by inheritance tax. And services that people moved here to access –doctors, dentists, post offices – are being withdrawn to bigger towns like Witney.’
In place of those vanishing services, there’s patchwork care. Through the Cornerstone Project, Butler-Gallie helps coordinate food parcels for struggling families. They supply school uniforms, assist older residents with online banking and digital access, and sort out ramps for people with disabilities.
‘For the young, there are no jobs,’ he says. ‘For the old, pensions don’t go as far as they used to. And government by the lanyard classes has compounded problems with rural poverty.’
It’s not just Charlbury, he adds. ‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how rough parts of Chipping Norton and Witney can be. Americans turning up expecting chocolate-box England are often shocked.’
Everywhere you look, there are traces of what used to be. The Old Glove Factory. The Old Post Office. The Old Fire Station. All carefully restored, each with a neatly cut slate nameplate commemorating the building’s former use.
The biggest thing to happen in Charlbury in recent years is that the pub, The Bull, has been hailed as one of the best pubs in Britain. Named National Pub of the Year in July, and allegedly a favourite of Ellen DeGeneres and Kamala Harris, it was praised for its ‘stripped-back design,’ ‘exceptional food,’ and ‘flawless service.’
There are no beer clips on the taps. Nothing so vulgar as a name on the sign. The lighting is dim enough to flatter even the most exhausted Londoner. It’s less a pub than a lifestyle rendering: a vision of English pastoral assembled from a Pinterest board.
But there are parts of Charlbury no one posts on Instagram. ‘People don’t drive through the big estate,’ says Jo, who helps run Cornerstone. ‘Charlbury is perceived as affluent, but that hides what’s really going on.’
She says the town now supports up to twenty households a week with food parcels. ‘You get these big cars arriving and going to The Bull. People are coming in to eye up the houses, but that drives up prices and they end up being bought as rentals.’
A few miles up the road, the aesthetic gives way to something even more urgent. In Chipping Norton, Emma Kennedy runs The Branch, a community hub that now sees around 200 people a week come through its doors. ‘Chipping Norton has some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in West Oxfordshire,’ she says. ‘In 2019, Chipping Norton ranked in the top ten per cent most deprived nationally for education, skills and training,’ she adds. ‘We bring together people from all walks of life. People from all economic backgrounds volunteer for The Branch. They are keen to contribute and connect.’
While the setting may look like postcard England, locals say the reality, especially for those on the margins, is far more complicated
The Branch was created to plug gaps that have widened as services retreated to Oxford or Witney. Its café acts as a gateway for families who might not otherwise ask for help. From there, it delivers 31 programmes, ranging from holistic support for families to re-engagement with education.
‘We have inner-city problems without inner-city support,’ Kennedy says. ‘Some families are being signposted to services forty miles away – with multiple appointments sometimes expected to travel over even two hundred miles on public transport a week. It’s just not possible. We’ve created a space where Citizens Advice, early intervention and other services can meet people where they are. There is a hunger for community here. People turn up early for the services. We see different generations talking with one another and learning from each other.’
Kennedy is determined to keep pushing. ‘We are trying to rebuild the community that has been stripped out in the last 15 years. We’ve created something that works across the whole socio-economic group. Our hope is to build a stronger, thriving community – a blueprint for other market towns.’
Back in Charlbury, the surface still holds. The stone is clean, the names on the houses are neat, and the illusion of order remains intact. Outside the Quaker Meeting House, a line from the American poet Helen Morgan Brooks is pinned to the board: ‘We are embraced by the silence that was there expecting us when we entered.‘ But it’s a different kind of silence now – not stillness, but retreat. The banks have gone. The post office is folded into the Co-op. A new Land Rover Defender hesitates mid–three-point turn outside The Bull, traffic waiting behind. A voice rises above the hush of idling engines : ‘Try the round the back – she said the lock box was behind the water butt.’
Comments